COMPOSERS: Durval Ferreira
LABELS: Capitol Jazz
PERFORMER: Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley (as), Sergio Mendes (p), Durval Ferreira (g), Octavio Bailly Jr (b), Dom Um Romao (d), Pedro Paulo (t), Paulo Moura (as)
CATALOGUE NO: 5 22667 2
Cannonball Adderley died of a stroke 25 years ago, aged 46. One of the great postwar beboppers he was influenced by Charlie Parker and played alongside Miles Davis. (His nickname derived from a sideman’s assertion that his appetite was such that he could eat a cannonball.)
By the Sixties, with his brother Nat, he was a pillar of the popular ‘soul jazz’ school. This 1962 album has Adderley deftly steering a young bossa nova sextet, the Bossa Rio, through a selection of Brazilian standards and originals from the guitarist Ferreira.
The idea behind the recording was to cash in on the craze for Latin music created by Stan Getz, Charlie Byrd and Joao Gilberto. Latin lounge music is trendy again and this sounds remarkably fresh.
Adderley’s playing, often too densely note-packed for some people’s taste, is exuberantly Romantic here, the bossa beat tempering his wanderlust perhaps. The rhythm section, particularly the drumming, is exquisitely tight. OK, it still sounds a bit like lift music, but what a lift. Garry Booth